This is the kind of work many new PIs find boring, but Leo said that this was a kind of logic puzzle, a game of inferences. What information was helpful? What could be ignored? How did you read a phone bill? A bank statement? What could you learn from an insurance claim or a credit card bill or a receipt from a plumber?

What I learn from looking through Mom and Dad’s old receipts is that they spent a lot of money on our old house. They were killed in September, but already that year they had replaced our dishwasher and our water heater. I remember the hot water running out while I was taking a shower and me screaming for Mom to fix it while I danced around in the tub under a stream of frigid water blasting from the shower head. The memory feels like someone just punched me in the breastbone, and I try to ignore it.

There’s a bill from our old pediatrician, Dr. Fuller. She was a kind, patient woman with a broad face and broad smile who put up with all my medical questions as I showed off what I knew. I remember her raising her eyebrows at some of my questions—at my eight-year-old checkup I asked her about pubic hair and why we needed it—but she always answered my questions as best she could, if only to distract me while she looked in my ears or hit my patellar tendon with a reflex hammer to make sure my central nervous system was up to par. If only there had been a simple test like that to figure out how my brain was wired.

Enough, I think. This isn’t a trip down memory lane. I need to be looking for anything that might have to do with my father and Iraq and missing money. Not that I’m expecting to find a bank statement showing a transfer of six million dollars into my parents’ checking account. I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for, which makes this exercise both potentially frustrating and intellectually challenging. Sherlock Holmes used to crave mental stimulation, which is why he would take cocaine when he had no crimes to solve. I don’t snort lines when I’m bored, usually, but my brain likes to be used, so I put down the pediatrician’s bill and apply myself to the task at hand.